


handcuffs leashes

by aetataureate, silentwalrus



Series: caveat emptor [6]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Ed: relax ive got a plan, Gen, Roy: YOU DO NOT GOT A PLAN, post-canon if you're into THAT, pre-slash if you're into that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:02:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25797859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aetataureate/pseuds/aetataureate, https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentwalrus/pseuds/silentwalrus
Summary: “Oh, perfect,” Ed says, which is so out of the expected range of greetings that Roy slows to a complete stop. “Here,” Ed continues, trotting up to him and - holding out the leash. “I was just tryna figure out how to do this - here, this is Chowder.”
Series: caveat emptor [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1790881
Comments: 39
Kudos: 581





	handcuffs leashes

**Author's Note:**

> once again - i'm posting these ficlets in the order they're completed, not necessarily the order they take place in. 
> 
> title from WAP thanks to gracelesso. thanks grace.

Roy decides to walk home from Chris’s new bar, because the night is warm and it’s technically still Saturday and it’s not every day now that he gets to exist without a full complement of guards. He lives on the other side of the main canal now, more than an hour away, but he grew up in the Lower Third and these streets are familiar: new businesses on old storefronts, the bones of the neighborhood the same through. There’s razing and new construction going on all over the city, but not nearly as much in the entire old town belt between Third and Victory Hill; Central hasn’t had a major earthquake yet, thank fuck, and ‘vintage’ bars have apparently gone trendy, so there hasn’t been much incentive to mow the place into a new shape. 

It gets quieter as he leaves the bars behind, the crowds thinning and the blocks becoming residential as he hits the edge of the warehouse district and heads along the western offshoot canal. He’d cut through the greenbelt, but just because Riza doesn’t think he needs guards at the moment doesn’t mean he needs to go walking through nighttime parks where any opportunist has plenty of cover to pop out and take their shot. He’s not cocky enough anymore to think that just because he doesn’t see anyone doesn’t mean he’s not being watched. 

He does take the back alley shortcut where the canal diverts, but given it’s family backyards on one side and an entire police precinct wall on the other, he’s not exactly worried. It’s not as though it’s deserted in these parts: he’s passed four separate people walking their dogs, with a fifth making their way towards him now. 

Then the figures pass under the lone streetlight, and Roy sees it’s _Ed,_ of all people. He’s dressed in a violently green t-shirt, peach sweatpants and tennis shoes, the dog at his side almost as incongruous as the bright clothes and the sliver of metal ankle glinting between hem and shoe. Up until two seconds ago Roy would’ve bet money that Ed sleeps in head to toe leather and that parting him from his boots would take surgical separation, which is probably why his “Ed?” comes out so incredulous. 

“Oh, _perfect,”_ Ed says, which is so out of the expected range of greetings that Roy slows to a complete stop. “Here,” Ed continues, trotting up to him and - holding out the leash. “I was _just_ tryna figure out how to do this - here, this is Chowder.”

“Chowder?” Roy repeats blankly, staring down at the dog; it’s tawny and bat-eared with a black face and paws, skinny in a courser-breed way, waist high on Ed with a curly spitz tail. “Who names a dog _Chowder?”_

“Corn Chowder, technically,” Ed says, not answering the question. “Hold this, bastard, c’mon - she don’t bite.” 

“People have said the same of you,” Roy says automatically, but he takes the leash. The dog pants up at him, apparently unconcerned at this transfer. “They were wrong.” 

Ed snorts. “Yeah, well, Chowder’s way nicer than I am. Just stay here for a second, okay?” 

He then starts backing up, eyes intent on the top of the wall - the _police precinct_ wall, and Roy stops thinking about how Ed keeps foisting strange animals off onto him and focuses on the devolving situation. “Edward. Why am I holding this dog.”

“Because I gotta go do something. Relax, it’ll only be a minute,” Ed says, still backing up, then runs at the wall. 

_Up_ the wall, Roy mentally corrects, as Ed catches hold of the top with his fingertips and fluidly pulls himself up. He’s clearly intending to swing himself over, but the acrobatics are followed by a short pause. “Huh. They did the broke glass trick up here.”

Roy suspected as much - the cheaper alternative to barbed wire is embedding spikes of cutting-edge broken glass into the cement tops of the walls, and this is not the best funded neighborhood - but clearly Ed has applied his trademark strategic approach of I’ll Deal With It When It Fucking Happens. And - true to form - he has now made it Roy’s problem. “Why,” Roy says, careful to keep his voice down, “are you climbing the wall of a police precinct.” 

“Well,” Ed grunts, shuffling his grip around a bit, clearly looking for a better handhold, “when we got sprung on those desk appearance grounds, Aline’s purse didn’t get given back from their damn evidence locker, and for fuckin’ obvious reasons she wasn’t exactly ready to skip on down and ask ‘em for it back. So I’m getting it for her.” 

Roy stares blankly at Ed’s back. “Are you serious,” he says, because this is - “Ed. I can formally seize the precinct’s entire evidence locker and have it impounded as military property with _one form._ It doesn’t even need triplicates. I can have them courier it _to your house_ if you like, you - Ed. Just give me the ticket number.”

“No,” Ed grunts, trying to wedge his elbows into whatever scant sliver of un-spiked space there is at the top. “I’m doing this the honest way.” 

Sometimes Roy genuinely does not understand what kind of coked-out crickets run the treadmills inside Ed’s head. “By _breaking in?”_

“Just hold the fucking dog, Mustang.” 

“Let me rephrase: by _making me an accessory to a B &E, _” Roy says. “All to impress a girl? How immune to prosecution do you think I am these days?”

“Dunno. Medium, probably,” Ed mutters, trying to place a hand further along the lip of the wall and then retracting it hurriedly. “And I’m not fucking trying to impress her, they’re all fucking scared of me already. _Ouch,_ fuck.” He pulls himself further up briefly, peers over the wall and then drops back down into his awkward elbow-hang again, huffing. “You know, some days I miss the fuckin’ automail.” 

Roy realizes two things: that for all that Ed’s gotten taller and broader and calmer he hasn’t gotten less fundamentally fucking feral, and that Roy is going to have to do something about this, pretty much right fucking now. He had thought, with that phone call from lockup, that Ed was over this; that he had realized relying on luck and calling the first loose collection of impulses to come to mind a plan are _not_ valid life strategies, that he had recognized that asking Roy for help would _get_ him help. More fool Roy for thinking so: he _knows_ Ed. 

One step forward, two steps back with this brat, Roy thinks grimly, taking three steps closer to the dangling mismatched legs. “Edward. I can quite literally solve this entire problem with two signatures. Note how this involves zero felonies whatsoever -” 

“Well, you _shouldn’t_ be able to just seize evidence from civilian police with no questions asked,” Ed grunts with increasing strain, “so _technically -”_

Roy gives up, loops Chowder’s leash around his wrist and grabs Ed by the ankles. 

_“Hey!”_

“Come down, Ed.” 

“What the _fuck,_ asshole -” 

“You don’t have a metal hand to deal with glass anymore, you can’t transmute it off without them seeing the flash, I will go home _right now_ and call my night secretary -”

“This has nothing to do with you!”

Ah. “Anything that might lead to you being arrested does, in fact, have to do with me,” Roy says flatly, tightening his grip against Ed’s wriggling; he can’t thrash too hard with how Roy’s pressing his toes into the wall. “My apologies, however, for assuming that the past decade has matured you in any way. Get down before someone comes and -”

“Uh,” says a voice from the mouth of the alley. “What exactly is going on here, gentlemen?”

It is, of course, a police officer, because Roy is prescient only at the absolute worst of times. The man’s young, alone, and judging by the brown paper bag in his hands recently returned from fetching a midnight supper, but he’s in full uniform and clearly on duty, eyeing them with extremely official suspicion. 

Roy flashes his best embarrassed smile. “I’m so sorry,” he says, squeezing as hard as he can at Ed’s ankles and mostly just getting twanging tendons in his hands for the trouble. “Sweetie,” he says up at Ed’s violently peach ass in revenge, “come on, get down from there.” 

“Is there something I can help you with?” the cop says, meaning _whatever the hell you’re doing had better stop._ “Gentlemen?” 

“I lost my hairtie. Up here,” Ed invents through his teeth, making no move to let go. “Because I was pinging it at him. And it went wide.” 

“So come down, honey.” Roy tugs on Ed’s ankles for emphasis. “You’ve got more hair ties at home.”

“But I hate _hair_ in my _face,”_ Ed grits, clearly not seeing any wisdom whatsoever in getting out of this without a fight. “You _know that.”_

“Then maybe it’s time for a haircut,” Roy returns, and has to step back smartly to avoid getting smacked when Ed abruptly lets go.

The dog goes nuts as soon as Ed hits the ground: she spins in a circle, jumps up on him, tries to lick his face but is so excited she misses and turns herself in a somersault. This is a handy distraction from how Ed barely bothers to hide how he’s yanking the hairtie out of his braid, so Roy flashes another smile at the officer and makes as big a muddle as he can trying to untangle the leash. “Sorry about this,” he says, using Ed’s own grab for the leash to reel him in and cinch an arm around his neck. “We got a bit overenthusiastic. Have a nice evening!”

Between the dog still trying to worship Ed’s face and Ed’s rapidly expanding hair it hopefully doesn’t look too much like Roy’s frogmarching Ed down the alleyway. If they didn’t have the dog with them the excuse wouldn’t have worked in a million years. As it is - who would break into a police precinct with a _dog?_

Edward Elric, that’s who. Roy ignores the tangible growl under his arm and tightens his grip, hissing, “And _what_ exactly was your plan here? Were you just going to leave the dog in the road? _Why_ even bring a dog in the first place -” 

Though as he’s saying it Roy does have to admit, if you’re in and out at speed and shed the extremely noticeable outfit right after, then being nearby and clearly just walking a dog is a decent way to give yourself an instant alibi. “Chowder would’ve come with,” Ed says, less combative and more sullen than Roy expected. “She was gonna be the distraction.” 

Never mind. “You were going to break into a police station,” Roy repeats, “and let the dog _loose?”_

“Yeah, _and?_ You ain’t seen Chowder run,” Ed says, like the _dog’s_ B&E skills are what Roy has a problem with here. “Or jump. What do you think the clothes an’all are for?” He shrugs enough that Roy tightens his grip automatically, but it gaps the neck of his shirt enough for Roy to see the black tank underneath. “Jump the wall, take this off - I would’ve turned some sheep loose but there’re no sheep round here and in any case Chowder’s better, she comes back on a whistle.” 

To even begin to address this Roy would need a blackboard, an electrified restraining chair and to first waterboard himself with gin, as well as probably having Ed just plain waterboarded. “Where did you even _get_ her? Is she even yours?”

“She’s my downstairs neighbor’s,” Ed says irritably. “I walk her sometimes. I know what I’m fucking doing, okay? I’ve done wilder shit before -”

“Edward,” Roy says, judging them far enough away from the precinct to stop, turn him and grip his shoulders, half in the shadow of a massive wisteria climbing out over someone’s front garden wall. “This was not an emergency. No one’s limbs or family or life were on the line. This is not a situation that requires you to run in half-cocked into a building full of armed washouts who couldn’t hack it in the military, endangering not only yourself but someone else’s pet. You have resources. You have a _brain.”_ Ed doesn’t say anything, which is unlike him, but the set of his mouth doesn’t get any less stubborn. If anything Roy watches him dig in further. “Are you this bored?”

That makes Ed’s lip curl. “You gonna give me a treadmill to run on? _Honey?”_

Roy just holds Ed’s gaze. “I always have work for you if you want it.” 

That flattens Ed’s mouth again, even if it’s not a happy line. “I’m fucking fine, Mustang. Write your damn evidence seizure order. We can have it all the state fuckin’ sanctioned way.”

That is not a problem solved or argument settled, and Roy needs this settled, now. “You owe me,” he says quietly. “I’m calling it in. For getting your friends out on a DAT - this is my favor. The next time something like this comes up: ask me first.” 

Ed’s eyes narrow, but Roy isn’t done. “I won’t hold it as debt. You getting arrested and having to provide full papers in court is as undesirable to me as it is to you. Promise it.”

He takes his hand off Ed’s shoulder and holds it between them, palm up, offer to obligation. For a long moment Ed stares at it like Roy’s holding out a cockroach, but Roy is patient. Ed won’t refuse. 

He doesn’t. He drops his hand into Roy’s like he’d rather drop them both into a vat of half-congealed lard instead, but his word is good even with his mouth twisting like he wants to curse Roy out. What he says, though, is, “Using rigged rules to your advantage doesnt actually fix the fucking problem. Bailing _me_ out doesn’t help whoever the fuck is gonna meet them next - I’ll keep my word, but I’m not done with this, Mustang. I’m _pissed._ And I’m not fucking done with these cops.” 

He goes to drop his hand but Roy doesn’t let him, squeezing harder. “You think you’re the only one?” Roy says, still quiet. “You think you’re the first, to take this on? Police corruption is not a new problem. It’s not the only problem. It’s not going to be fixed by you robbing a precinct and scaring a couple of officers for a month or two. You met Dianne. You think all she does is flash her breasts to get punks out of lockup on my say so?” Ed’s eyes widen slightly at Dianne’s name. Roy’s familiar with the effect. “You want to talk police reform, I’ll give you her number. Don’t waste your time chasing one pack of pigs when you can go for the throat.”

He releases Ed’s hand, taking it by the wrist instead to press the leash into his palm. “Here. Give me the ticket number, I’ll have the bag couriered to you. Does Hughes have your current address?”

Ed’s eyes have dropped to their joined hands. His fingers curl around the leash strap. “You got a pen?”

Roy does turn out to have a ballpoint lurking in the depths of one pocket, which Ed, of course, then attempts to use directly on Roy’s hand. “Are you joking?”

Ed scowls up at him. “Well? Gimme paper then.”

Paper, Roy does not have, not even some ancient wadded receipt. He sighs, rolls up his sleeve and gives Ed his forearm. “Write small.”

Ed’s still-loose hair tickles across Roy’s wrist when he bends his head and starts to write. Chowder, who neatly sat at Ed’s feet when they stopped, pants unconcernedly up at them. Roy gives her ears a scratch with his free hand; she squints in doggy pleasure and thumps her tail. Ed caps the pen, holds it out and draws away; Roy takes it, glances down at the writing and then does a double take. “Edward.”

“What.”

“This is upside down.”

“To you, maybe,” Ed mutters. “What’s Dianne’s number.” 

Roy sighs, recognizes that this is the best he’s going to get right now and pockets the pen. “Call and tell me the evenings you’re free for the next month and I’ll introduce you. Properly.”

Ed’s face creases in disgruntlement. “The next _month?”_

“You think Dianne’s got an open schedule? She’s busier than I am. She’ll meet with you, but not without an appointment.” Roy gives Chowder’s ears a final scratch. “Go home. We’ll deal with this without you having to steal your neighbor’s dog and raid some poor sorority girl’s wardrobe.” 

“You go home,” Ed says without much heat, jangling the leash to get Chowder standing. Seeing the wind dropped from his sails is never exactly a victory, but when Ed looks up from the dog Roy can see a familiar glint in his eyes. “You asked me to call you for my problems now, bastard. Get your sleep while you can.” 

Roy smiles, thin but meaning it. “I look forward to it, Edward. Goodnight.”

**Author's Note:**

> Ed, catching sight of roy: well there goes MY last braincell


End file.
